NBN a mistake, says Turnbull, blaming Labor for 'calamitous train wreck'

Malcolm Turnbull has labelled the national broadband network a mistake and blamed Labor for leaving the Coalition a “calamitous train wreck” of a project while responding to concerns from the NBN Co chief executive that it may not pay its own way.

Bill Morrow has suggested that competing technologies may hamper the commercial viability of the NBN in the lead-up to an ABC Four Corners investigation, airing Monday night, into the digital divide between premises that get faster fibre-to-the-premises rather than fibre-to-the-node connections.
In an interview with Fairfax Media, Morrow said the NBN Co collected $43 a month from retailers who sold the NBN into homes but needed $52 to recover its costs.

“We, NBN and the board, are betting that future applications are going to bring more value into homes, that they are going to need more bandwidth or more data and that the retail service providers will pay us more,” he is quoted as saying.

But 4G wireless networks compete with the NBN and do not attract a $7.09 a month levy that the government charges fixed-line NBN competitors.

“As soon as competitors eat into these margins through enhanced antenna technology, we’ve got a problem,” he said, suggesting that the government may have to subsidise the NBN or “regulate to protect this model”.

In the 2018 NBN corporate plan, the NBN is predicted to make a return of between 3.2% and 3.7% in the long term. here